The Age of Innocence eBook

But Newport represented the escape from duty into
an atmosphere of unmitigated holiday-making.
Archer had tried to persuade May to spend the summer
on a remote island off the coast of Maine (called,
appropriately enough, Mount Desert), where a few hardy
Bostonians and Philadelphians were camping in “native”
cottages, and whence came reports of enchanting scenery
and a wild, almost trapper-like existence amid woods
and waters.

But the Wellands always went to Newport, where they
owned one of the square boxes on the cliffs, and their
son-in-law could adduce no good reason why he and
May should not join them there. As Mrs. Welland
rather tartly pointed out, it was hardly worth while
for May to have worn herself out trying on summer
clothes in Paris if she was not to be allowed to wear
them; and this argument was of a kind to which Archer
had as yet found no answer.

May herself could not understand his obscure reluctance
to fall in with so reasonable and pleasant a way of
spending the summer. She reminded him that he
had always liked Newport in his bachelor days, and
as this was indisputable he could only profess that
he was sure he was going to like it better than ever
now that they were to be there together. But
as he stood on the Beaufort verandah and looked out
on the brightly peopled lawn it came home to him with
a shiver that he was not going to like it at all.

It was not May’s fault, poor dear. If,
now and then, during their travels, they had fallen
slightly out of step, harmony had been restored by
their return to the conditions she was used to.
He had always foreseen that she would not disappoint
him; and he had been right. He had married (as
most young men did) because he had met a perfectly
charming girl at the moment when a series of rather
aimless sentimental adventures were ending in premature
disgust; and she had represented peace, stability,
comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable
duty.

He could not say that he had been mistaken in his
choice, for she had fulfilled all that he had expected.
It was undoubtedly gratifying to be the husband of
one of the handsomest and most popular young married
women in New York, especially when she was also one
of the sweetest-tempered and most reasonable of wives;
and Archer had never been insensible to such advantages.
As for the momentary madness which had fallen upon
him on the eve of his marriage, he had trained himself
to regard it as the last of his discarded experiments.
The idea that he could ever, in his senses, have dreamed
of marrying the Countess Olenska had become almost
unthinkable, and she remained in his memory simply
as the most plaintive and poignant of a line of ghosts.

But all these abstractions and eliminations made
of his mind a rather empty and echoing place, and he
supposed that was one of the reasons why the busy
animated people on the Beaufort lawn shocked him as
if they had been children playing in a grave-yard.